


the plant that doesn't bloom

by shealwaysreads (onereader)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cursed Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Magic being helpful, Post-War, Pre-Relationship, when a curse is not a curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24830002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereader/pseuds/shealwaysreads
Summary: Apologies, and homecoming, and forgiveness tucked into the petals of a rose.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 35
Kudos: 233





	the plant that doesn't bloom

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely and talented [fae-vourite](https://fae-vorite.tumblr.com/) who shared [this](https://fae-vorite.tumblr.com/post/620668275292012544/fae-vorite-is-creating-drarry-illustrations-hp) stunning art and concept with the fandom! ❤️
> 
> Title from the incomparable Pablo Neruda's [one hundred love sonnets xvii.](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49236/one-hundred-love-sonnets-xvii)

Malfoy had come back to Hogwarts different.

The war had tempered him. His trial had quenched the fire in his eyes. Rebuilding Hogwarts had smoothed the rough edges of his ego, his trauma, his regret.

They had all had a week off, before term began in September, after toiling under the summer sun to restore their school. Big magic and small. Levitating fresh stones to rebuild towers, spinning panes of glass out of sand from the shore of the Black Lake, learning how to cast spells without the fear of the Carrows. 

Malfoy hadn’t spoken at first, not to anyone. Harry wondered if he’d been cursed mute, for a while, until he heard him approach Hermione with a grave face and a quiet voice. 

“May I have a moment of your time, Granger?”

That was the first of many approaches he made over July and August. Harry watched him step towards them all; Ron, Neville, Ginny and Luna, and students Harry didn’t even know. Always serious, always respectful, always quiet. He spoke to almost everyone, even the teachers. But not to Harry. Not until the final day of their summer labours.

“Potter. May I—can we talk?”

Harry looked around at his friends—they wouldn’t judge him if he said no to Malfoy. Ron had told him that Malfoy had apologised to him when they spoke, had admitted familial responsibility for the generations old feud between their families, even offered restitution. Ron had accepted the end of the feud, but rebuffed any payment. He’d said Malfoy seemed to have grown a backbone, and a conscience. Ron thought he was still ‘a posh twat’, but that maybe, _maybe_ Malfoy wasn’t as bad under it all than they had thought. Maybe even Malfoy had learned a thing or two about right and wrong, in the end.

Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Malfoy would say to him, wasn’t sure what kind of apology he would receive, wasn’t even sure he had the strength to lose the stability of hating Malfoy. 

(But he hadn’t hated him. Not since Sectumsempra. Not since the Astronomy tower. Not since ‘I can’t be sure’. He’d pitied him, despised his misplaced loyalty to his parents, wondered how he survived—but not hated. Harry wasn’t sure he was made for hate.)

“Alright, Malfoy. Have at it.”

Malfoy led him to the shade of the big oak tree, away from the rest of the group, near the shore of the lake. He looked anxious, clenching his jaw and fussing at the cuff of his robes.

“Potter, I would like to formally apologise for… Well. For everything, I suppose. For my own actions, for my father’s too. From our first meeting I have been an example of everything I now understand to be rotten at the heart of my family, and—”

Harry interrupted him. “I don’t want an apology from your father or your family, Malfoy. You can only really speak for yourself.”

Malfoy swallowed, hard. “I am sorry. If I had ‘just’ been a bully that would be bad enough, but I wasn’t that. I was cruel to you and your friends, and then dangerous and violent too. I could blame it on my upbringing, the prejudice I was raised to believe, but—” he lifted his chin, steeling himself for something. “But it started because I was jealous and angry, and that’s inexcusable. So. I apologise.”

Harry wasn’t sure what to say to that, he didn’t think he was ready to digest it, really. What do you say when someone apologises to you, but you don’t want to forgive them?

“Thanks. For saying sorry.” That would do, wouldn’t it?

But Malfoy didn’t walk away, or anything helpful like that. He reached into his robes instead, and pulled out a tiny silver box, engraved with delicate curlicues that glinted in the late summer sun.

“This is for you. It’s not a gift, you understand. It’s yours by right.” He held it out to Harry, and for want of a better option, Harry took it. “My mother...took things from the Black household when she was younger. For her own use. But these were Sirius Black’s diaries, and I understand she never managed to read them. Anhaga boxes are infamous for their loyalty to their owner.”

It was like a punch to the gut. This tiny box, no bigger than his palm, held Sirius’ secrets, his life recorded in his own words. 

“If she couldn’t—how can I?”

“Blood, I imagine. That kind of privacy is pricey. But you’re his godson. That’s family, more than any relation he had to my mother. It will work.” 

And with that, Malfoy turned and walked away, leaving Harry in the dappled shade with a handful of Sirius’ precious thoughts.

  


* * *

  


Malfoy had been right. A drop of blood was all it took to enlarge the Anhaga box, and to open it. Out spilled parchment, notebooks, letters, folded posters and flyers, and dogeared photographs. Most of it was in Sirius’ own scratchy handwriting, but some of the letters were in James’ scrawl. Harry’s dad had written them to Sirius. Moments of youthful joy and intimacy, secrets and mundanities, quotes and song lyrics, newly discovered spells, and stories of flings and firsts, shared between best friends. Brothers by choice.

Harry had wept, and read, and laughed, and read, and for the first time in his life he knew what his father thought about Quidditch teams, and Bowie, and how no hair potions worked on him _either_ (much to Sirius’ delight), and that he had adored Harry’s mother—adored her, had written long paragraphs doubting his worthiness of her time, of his hope she might smile at him, that she might want him back, one day, no doubt seeking the reassurance and commiseration from Sirius.

It hurt, but he read them all. It hurt, but it was a gift. It hurt, but Harry touched each piece of paper like a talisman, like a blessing.

  


* * *

  


The first of September was bitter-sweet, but alongside the taste of loss, Harry was excited for his last year at Hogwarts. Returning to his first real home, with his first—and best—friends by his side. No doom lay ahead of him, no danger. Just homework, and exams, and treacle tart. 

And Harry had never dreamed of much, not much more than space and light and safety and people who loved him, but he had found them all when he walked through the great oak doors of Hogwarts, and not even a war—not even dying—had taken them away.

They might be adults now, grasping onto the fading threads of childhood before they launched themselves into the unknown, but Harry thought they’d earned this. A year’s respite from the world. A warm interlude to relax, to lick their wounds, to dance in the stark joy of life, to take back that stolen year. 

The Welcome Feast was stupendous, and Harry’s face hurt from grinning so widely when Professor McGonagall stood to give her first speech as Hogwarts Headmistress. Seamus blew up a goblet of spiked Pumpkin juice, Ginny snogged Dean, and Harry was flanked by Ron and Hermione—warm, and full, and content.

  


* * *

  


He was even happy the next morning, waking up to cold flagstones and a shared bathroom, Ron’s monosyllabic pre-breakfast grunts, and Neville’s rather excitable Flaming Geranium (he was pretty sure the House Elves could fix the curtains around his bed.) He was happy striding through the halls down to breakfast, head and shoulders above the tiny little first years who were more interested in finding their way to class than looking at his forehead. He was happy until he heard the whispers about Malfoy, and glanced reflexively across the room to the Slytherin table. 

Malfoy was different. Still pale, still silver-eyed. But his skin was marred by dark twisting shapes, writhing against his skin. _Cursed_ were the whispers. But Harry had never seen a curse like this. So he watched.

“Harry, don’t you think—oh, never mind.” Hermione broke off, sighed, and turned to talk to Parvati.

His first lesson was Potions—he wasn’t sure he wanted to be an Auror, but he wanted the option so he was back in Slughorn’s class—it was an eighth year only class with all of the houses mixed, so of course Malfoy was there too. He sat with Terry Boot, and seemed to work well enough with him. Harry followed him to the supply cupboard when he went to fetch ingredients, and took the opportunity to look closer at the strange marks on his skin. They were briars, curling around his wrists, his hands, trailing up his throat, to the line of his jaw. Green-black and thorny, they seemed to move with him, breathe with him, even as the points of their barbs pressed against pale skin.

“New tattoos?” He asked. He still wasn’t sure what to make of Malfoy’s apology, of his quietude, of the tumult of confused emotion that stirred in Harry’s chest whenever he was confronted with him. The feelings that boiled inside him, worse than ever, after he gave Harry Sirius’s papers.

Malfoy sighed. Clearly Harry wasn’t the first to ask. “No, Potter, not a tattoo.”

“A curse, then?”

“Of a sort, yes.” He reached past Harry’s face to take a jar of lacewing fly. “You can have these when I’ve taken a couple.”

And then he was gone, leaving Harry confused and lacewing-less in an empty cupboard.

  


* * *

  


At lunch, Harry squeezed in beside Hermione and her towering pile of books, the question spilling out before he gave it conscious thought.

“Have you seen the things on Malfoy? They look like—”

“Harry, really? It’s been _one day_.” She was laughing as she cut him off, though, and so was Ron next to her, even though he pretended to be very interested in his plate. “Look, before we start this, are you suspicious of him, or are you just curious?”

He paused, his sandwich halfway to his mouth, and thought for a moment. “I think I’m just curious.”

She sighed, but smiled as she answered him. “Well, okay then. I think it’s a Motus Charm.”

“Not a—“

“No, not a curse. Though, functionally, I suppose…” 

She trailed off, and Harry could sense an incoming debate about the differences between spell classifications and the intention of the caster (all eighth years had been enrolled on a new course in magical ethics, and the debate across the first class that morning had already been fiery) so he interrupted her before she could get on a roll. “Hermione, what does it do?”

“Well, it creates markings on a person’s skin that give an insight into their emotional state. It gives movement to what moves them.” 

“So...those thorns are how Malfoy _feels_?” Harry wasn’t sure how _he_ felt about that. About Malfoy feeling, well, restricted by vines, pressed against by thorns. As far as metaphors went, it didn’t look good. Worse still, Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about the world getting to see it all. It was bad enough when the papers made up nonsense about how Harry was ‘coping emotionally’ post-war—he couldn’t imagine the agony of them actually _knowing_ for sure. 

“It appears that way. I just wonder who cast it on him, he didn’t have them during the summer, and apparently he had them at the welcome feast—so it wasn’t done by a student.” Hermione was frowning, the same crease between her brows when she didn’t agree with something. She hadn’t said much about what Malfoy talked to her about when he apologised, just that he was ‘thorough and straightforward’. Since then she’d not been friendly toward him, but she’d certainly been civil. Apparently he’d made enough of an impact on her that she disapproved of him being cursed—or charmed—like this. 

“Can it be cured?” 

“According to Flitwick, it fades naturally, once the witch or wizard under the charm begins to actually talk about their feelings. Or, at least, begins to feel understood. So, it depends, I suppose.”

Harry looked over at Malfoy, he was flipping through a book, sipping tea, and studiously ignoring the stares he was receiving from half the student body. The briars were slow moving, more settled than when Harry had spoken to him during their Potions class. Maybe that meant _he_ was calmer. Maybe that meant that Harry stressed him out. 

But as he stood and left the Slytherin table, those coils of dark vines and thorns writhed again across his pale skin. Harry was up and out of his seat, following him into the corridor beyond, without a second thought. Behind him, Harry could hear Ron muttering something to Hermione about ‘feelings’ and ‘curiosity’, but he didn’t have time to stop and question it. Not when Malfoy was already ahead of him, and Harry wanted to catch him before the press of the rest of the school filled the halls.

“Malfoy! Wait!”

And Malfoy did wait, which was weird enough that Harry almost did an about turn and scurried back to the Gryffindor table. He stopped and turned as Harry jogged up to him, and he looked calm and collected—his face impassive and carefully blank—but the barbed stems that licked up to his jaw, and curled over his knuckles, were black and razor-sharp. 

“I wanted—” What _had_ Harry wanted? To ask, to interrogate, to find out _who_ , and _when_ , and _why_? But looking at Malfoy now, and the discomfort written on his skin for all to see, Harry suddenly felt disinclined to ask him to expose himself further. So, no questions. For now. “I wanted to say thanks. For Sirius’ things. It was—I really—You didn't have to.” 

Malfoy rolled his eyes, but the thorns at his throat seemed to lose their keen edge. “No, I suppose I didn’t. But you’re welcome. I’m glad it opened for you.”

“And about your apology,” Harry continued, eyeing the litmus-test of foliage on Malfoy’s skin. “I wasn’t sure how I felt, in the summer, when you said sorry.”

“It’s okay Potter, I know I don’t have any right to—” 

He broke off, silent and staring as Harry stepped forward and held out his hand, and for long moments Harry wondered if he might not take it. If this time, it would be Malfoy leaving Harry with his offer of connection hanging, rejected, between them. But then Malfoy reached out his own arm and took Harry’s hand in his, and it was pale and wand-calloused, and his fingers were slimmer than Harry’s, but his grip was firm and steady, and warm. 

“Apology accepted, Malfoy. I reckon even we might deserve a fresh start this year, don’t you?”

Malfoy didn’t speak; but before Harry’s eyes, those dark vines slowed, ripened into a spring green, and flowers bloomed on Malfoy’s skin. Pale roses unfurled, soft and blushing at their centre. One curved around the back of Malfoy’s hand, where Harry still held firm, and another blossomed at the spot where his collar was loose at his throat. 

Maybe Harry didn’t need Malfoy’s words. Words had always been hard for them. For now, maybe he could learn to understand him through thorns and petals. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading - if you enjoyed this fic let me know in the comments, and come and say hello on [Tumblr](https://shealwaysreads.tumblr.com/) ❤️


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